'Romanian gypsies beware beware. Loyalist C18 are coming to beat you like a baiting bear'
Text message sent by Combat 18 in Northern Ireland last week Belfast was shocked by last week's assaults on Roma families. But in 'the Village', the loyalist enclave where anti-Romanian sentiment is strongest, even those who condemn the violence are bitterly opposed to immigration. By Henry McDonald
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On Friday evening, in nearby Donegall Avenue, police officers were raiding three homes, in the "Village", a working-class loyalist district wedged between the edge of the university and the M1 motorway. A 15-year-old and a 16-year-old were last night charged with provocative conduct, while the 15-year-old was also charged with intimidation of the Romanian families. Others have gone into hiding as the Police Service of Northern Ireland comes under pressure to erase what the city's lord mayor, Naomi Long, has called the "stain of shame" over Belfast.
The "Village", with its long rows of Victorian terraced houses running down towards Windsor Park stadium, home of the Northern Ireland football team, has been for some time the pressure point for racism in the province. In April, 46 Polish nationals fled from their homes after a series of co-ordinated attacks. The orgy of violence was carried out by a gang of loyalist youths in retaliation for the behaviour of Polish football hooligans who started a riot outside Windsor Park before the Northern Ireland-Poland World Cup clash, which the home side won 3-2.
Since the middle of the decade, foreign nationals from across the world who have moved into the area have been the target of racists. First, it was the Chinese whose homes were attacked, then the Poles and Slovakians, and latterly the Roma. At the end of 2004 there were an estimated 453 race hate crimes a year reported to the PSNI across Northern Ireland; in the past 12 months that figure has risen to 1,000.
There are plenty of people in the "Village" who, while condemning violence, are openly hostile to immigrants. One middle-aged woman in Olympia Drive, at the back of Windsor Park, who refused to give her name, complained that there were too many foreigners in her area.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/21/race-northern-ireland-romanian-gypsies